Wednesday, February 25, 2009

This past Saturday Matt and I, along with 15 other cooks, were lucky enough to get to spend the morning cooking a lunch in the kitchen of the Corner Table with the chef Scott Pampuch. This Cooking A Go-Go event was put together by the Cookin' Minnesota group & we were lucky to get two of the spots. Chef Pampuch, one of this year's James Beard nominees, is known for his farm to table philosophy & we were given pretty much free run to his fabulous walk-in.When we arrived at the restaurant we were greeted with mimosas & coffee. After a few minutes to settle in we were given the rules of working in a professional kitchen & then split into teams, egg, meat, vegetable, starch and dessert. Matt was on team starch & I was part of team dessert.Each team was taken into the walk-in cooler by Scott to discuss their ideas for their dish based on what was seasonal & on hand. Matt's group decided on a mushroom risotto & roasted root vegetables. My team decided to make a bread pudding with apple, dried fig and golden raisins that we would top with brown butter sauce & vanilla whipped cream.As you can imagine the kitchen was a fury of activity with 17 people cooking at once. But thanks to Scott's patience & humor all the dishes finished on time & we had an amazing lunch.Team Egg served us an egg crostini topped with mushrooms. I think this was my favorite dish of the day. It seems so simple but the flavor was so deep & wonderful.Team Vegetable made a cream of vegetable soup that was garnished with sautéed kale and a salad that was full of fennel, apples, olives and almonds.Team Starch's mushroom risotto, made with the mushroom stems the restaurant had leftover, was also full of deep flavor & a perfect accompaniment to the meat. Unfortunately, their roasted vegetables did not cook through on time, no problem though as Scott planned on turning them into a roasted vegetable soup for that night's dinner service.Team Meat treated us to two duck dishes. One was duck breast with a golden curry sauce. The other was duck confit on a bed of potatoes & onion. Both we fabulous!As for my Team Dessert, we had a little problem with our bread pudding as it was huge & didn't cook completely evenly but we did manage to cut out enough good bits for everyone, though at that point we were all so full we almost could have skipped dessert.

We love to eat at Corner Table but getting to cook there, what a treat!

Your dessert was rich and delicious and Matt's risotto was great. I got 2 servings of it in small carry out containers and had a great lunch at work the next 2 days! Glad I got to cook with you guys and everyone else there. Scott was such a gracious host!